Relocation
by msjgatsby
Summary: Takes place after the end of Season 3. PIKE
1. Chapter 1

Paige smooths down the pencil skirt of her dress. She feels like she's playing an undercover role, but it's just her first day at her new job. She feels like a sellout, but she looks the part. Her hair is tied up in a neat bun, her nails are filed and painted with clear polish, she's toned down her bracelets to a simple wrist watch, and her blazer is appropriately fitted and dry cleaned. Originally she added some fake glasses, but then decided it looked like she was trying too hard.

She follows her obviously flustered boss, Daryl, down the hall as he points out where the copy machine is, describes daily life in the office and introduces her to people. She tries to look interested even as she is gripped by a rising panic at the thought of this monotony becoming her everyday life. It is so different then the life she had been living at Graceland where she never knew what the next hour might look like. Here the next twenty years look like they could be the same day on repeat.

Unfortunately Graceland wasn't an option anymore. Not since Jakes had run off with the money. Not since Charlie had snitched on Briggs which had led to him being investigated and arrested. Afterwards Charlie had taken an internal promotion she couldn't talk about. Johnny became a bouncer at a local club at night and picked up shifts when FBI needed extra guys. Until recently Paige spent most of her temporary sabbatical hanging out with Johnny at the club, drinking and wondering what the future held. Of course Mike was out the door and back in DC before the dust had even settled. That was Mike.

Paige nodded and smiled at Daryl as he got really excited about the toner in the fax machine, but her mind drifts to the last time she saw Mike before he left for DC...

* * *

"Hey." Paige knocks on Mike's door.

"Hey. How are you holding up?" Mike asks, seeing Paige standing in his doorway.

"Been better, but I can honestly say I've been worse. I'm not sure that's a good thing." Paige says with a dry laugh walking into his room.

"Yeah, I know what you mean. I still can't believe Jakes… Well. Hey, I never got a chance to ask, what happened today?" Mike asks, sitting down on his bed, and gesturing for her to have a seat.

"What had to happen. Is Gusti safe?" Paige responds, not wanting to get into the details of Ari's murder.

"Yeah. He hates me, but he's free." Mike sighs.

"You're a good man." Paige says quietly.

Mike gives her a questioning look, and she realizes she's never said this out loud to him. She truly believes it though. Mike was one of the good guys, no matter how hard it was to stay that way.

"I don't feel like a good man." Mike says, looking fifty years older than when he first came to Graceland.

"Why did you sign the report?" Paige asks curiously.

"The damage was already done. I can't fix the past. I can only look at the decision before me, and try to cause the least amount of damage." Mike responds. "Thanks for your support earlier today by the way. It really meant a lot."

"Of course. I meant it." Paige says, thinking about his words, "I trust you."

"Something else bothering you?" Mike asks when he realizes she's not leaving his room.

"I want to talk." Paige takes a deep breath and turns towards him on the bed.

"Okay…" Mike says nervously as he physically braces himself, and Paige can't suppose she blames him. None of their talks go well recently. "About what?"

"About that thing we never talk about." She says, determined not to lose her nerve.

"We don't talk much at all these days… You're going to have to be more specific." Mike says dryly.

"Well maybe we should." Paige looks at him, hoping he will take the lead on this conversation. She doesn't know exactly what she wants to say, only that she needs to say it.

"Can we just not? Look I've only got a few hours left and I don't want to spend them fighting." Mike groans, looking away from her intense stare.

"I don't want to fight. I just want to talk." Paige holds up her hands in peace.

"When I wanted to talk to you, you said no, why can't I?" Mike says a little more aggressively, reminding her of the days he came back from the hospital and chased her around trying to talk to him when she could barely make eye contact her guilt weighed so heavily on her conscious.

"Mike you're leaving and we may never... I need to-" Paige tries to force the words out, but she feels like her throat is closing up.

"We've been together every day for months and now you want to suddenly-" Mike cuts her off before she can finish her sentence.

"You don't have to get so defensive-" Paige argues back.

"Can you blame me?!" Mike demands.

"Whenever we talk nothing gets said! You tell me folksy stories of your grandfather or hint at something like I'm supposed to read your goddamn mind. We never talk about anything real! There's always this unspoken thing blocking-"

"Fine." Mike says angrily, unable to deny her anything. "What do you want to know?"

"Did you mean it?" Paige asks hopefully.

"Mean what?" Mike asks cautiously.

"That night. Before I got captured by Sulla. When you said, your heart was somewhere else." Paige asks, "What did you mean?"

"Come on. It was so long ago… It really doesn't matter now… Clearly you-" Mike blushes and shrugs it off.

"Answer the question, Mike." Paige orders, "Did you mean it?"

"Why do you think I stayed in Graceland?" Mike answers her question with another question, straightening up to look her dead in the eye. His tired lost look answers her question more completely than any words ever could.

"I just assumed you realized that DC was a bunch of circle jerking over hollow victories…" Paige begins, but Mike cuts her off.

"Jess offered me a promotion if I went back with her, but you had just gotten back in the house from Sulla's and you weren't speaking to me. I thought you'd eventually… I wanted to make sure you were okay. But then I just made everything worse. I don't know. Maybe I should have gone back to DC when I had the chance." Mike says brokenly, looking away from her and out his window.

"I'm glad you didn't." Paige says honestly, making him look back at her with a more vulnerable look than she's seen in a while.

"I keep going over every wrong choice I made. You told me to pick Bates. I was too jealous. Even then, I was so scared of any chance of losing you, and I went with Jakes instead-" Mike begins to explain.

"You didn't know…" Paige defends his actions.

"If Bates had been with you on that stakeout he never would have let… Hell, I should have been the one on that stakeout." Mike balls the shirt he's folding up into his fist.

"I didn't tell you I was going." Paige forgives him for this too.

"Yeah, and that was my fault too. You should have felt like you could have come to me, but I-" Mike laughs bitterly and runs a hand down his face, "I fucked that up too."

"We were fighting. It happens. You couldn't have known-" Paige knows there's plenty of times Mike screwed up, but hindsight is twenty-twenty, and she knows he's taking an unfair amount of the blame.

"Well, I should have told you about Jess. It just… honestly, it was over for me the moment I saw you again, and it didn't seem important. Then, I couldn't find a time to tell you before she just showed up and then it looked like I was hiding something…" Mike's tripping over his words now, "I tried to tell you how much you meant to me, Paige, but I was too late and… well, I guess it doesn't matter now."

"It matters to me… you matter to me, Mike." Paige admits, hoping he'll say more.

"Is there any chance… You'd want to go have a bonfire? I mean, I know Jakes is on the run, and who knows what's going to- I just really would like one last night." Mike asks.

"Sure, that sounds great. I'll text Johnny and Charlie, but I'm sure they-" Paige pulls out her phone but Mike's hand on her wrist makes her pause.

"Maybe just you and me to start?" Mike asks earnestly.

"Sounds perfect." Paige smiles at him.

* * *

All in all, considering everything they'd gone through, it was a very civil way to end things.

The bonfire had been small, just the two of them until Charlie and Johnny joined later and Mike had caught a flight for DC the next day.

It was the end of an era.


	2. Chapter 2

Paige sighs as she listens to Daryl tell her of what he seemed to think was a very amusing anecdote about the time Nancy accidentally ordered the wrong toner for the fax machine. Oh that Nancy. Such a riot.

She misses California. Maybe she should have taken Johnny up on that offer to become a bartender at his club and they could find a place to rent together as roommates. Yet for some reason here she was, being led by Darryl over to the coffee station.

"Quite the crowd at the coffee station today… Oh I see why." Daryl groans, but continues his path to introduce her. "Agent Paige Arkin, meet receptionist Nancy Greene, administrative assistant Nina Wilhelm , human resources Laura Potter and agent Mike Warren."

Oh yeah, this was why Paige had uprooted her California dream life and moved across the country to become a paper pusher.

It was to see the shocked look on his handsome face when he first realized she was here now.

To his credit, he does not disappoint. Mike just stands there shocked, staring at her jaw open. After a full minute of gawking, he takes a sip of his coffee trying to bide some time to recover and look casual, but doesn't remember he's just poured it so it burns his mouth.

"Mike's not one of us DEA. He's FBI, but he likes to come down here and steal our coffee and distract our staff." Daryl gives a glare and two of the female staffers scatter to get back to work.

The receptionist doesn't take the hint and stays behind to pour herself a casual cup of coffee, eyeing Paige as though she's competition. Daryl glares at Mike. He clearly feels threatened by Mike, and Paige just stands there staring at Mike like a predator stares at prey. Mike finally recovers from his burned mouth, and decides to just reach out his hand to shake hers.

"Hi." He says lamely, still trying to recover.

"Hi. Agent Warren was it?" Paige teases.

"Mike." He corrects her, still not sure what the hell is going on. "Um, what brings you here?"

"I was just showing Agent Arkin around the offices, _Mike_." Daryl says with a threatening voice, and Paige's hunch was right, he does not like Mike. "It's her first day."

"First day of what?" Mike asks, and Daryl stares at him annoyed.

"Agent Arkin is our new DEA hire." Daryl says, "She's transferred from California."

"You… you work here?" Mike looks dumbfounded.

Paige stands there grinning, because Mike seems to be having incredible trouble catching up. Just a few months out of field work and he can't think on his toes anymore.

"Don't you need to be getting back to work Nancy?" Daryl suggests, trying to look intimidating.

"In just a minute, I need the dish on the new girl, what was your name again?"

"Agent Arkin, and you are...?" Paige knows a power struggle when she sees one, and stands her ground.

"Nancy."

"Nancy, right. How could I forget? Daryl's told me so much about you." Paige says with a giant fake smile, clearly throwing Nancy off whatever dominance game she'd been trying to play for Mike. Paige turns to Mike and very sweetly asks, "Have you told Agent Warren about that toner story, Daryl?"

"So Agent Arkin. What brings you to DC from California?" Nancy asks nosily. Mike eyes her warily, clearly very interested in Paige's answer. "Too much sunshine?"

"New opportunities." Paige says simply. She says the words to Nancy, but her eyes are trained on Mike.

"You know Mike transferred from California originally. I don't suppose you two ever ran into each other there?" Nancy asks suspiciously.

Paige looks over to see if Mike feels like jumping in the conversation anytime soon but he remains almost completely silent, staring at her like he's seen a ghost.

"It's a big state. Separate divisions." Paige says simply when it becomes clear Mike is not going to speak up anytime soon.

"Still I'm surprised you didn't at least hear of him. He was quite the rockstar. Shut down a big bus line, and a sex trafficking ring almost single-handedly." Nancy flirts, reaching out to stroke Mike's arm as she brags about his accomplishments.

"You don't say?" Paige raises a skeptical eyebrow at Mike who looks appropriately mortified. "That was you? Someday you'll have to tell me how you did it."

"Oh no, Mike never talks about his time in California." Nancy giggles, still holding onto Mike's arm possessively as she tries to align herself more with him. "DC was his first choice, he just had to pay his dues in California to get here. Which is ridiculous. He obviously belongs here. But oh well, it's done now. Thank God, no offense."

Paige looks at Mike's stiff body language and his eyes on his shoes trying to figure out how much of this is Mike's real feelings and how much of it is Nancy trying to mark her territory and prove she knows him better than the new girl.

"Yeah, all those beaches and sunshine. Sounds like hell." Paige smiles at Mike, trying to keep her fist from tightening with the desire to punch Nancy in the face. "You must've been glad to escape?"

"It got hard sometimes, but I wouldn't trade my time in California for the world." Mike finally says, and Paige knows this is him trying to calm her down and assure her she meant something. "I'm surprised you left."

"Well... things change. Sometimes you have to move on." Paige tells him, and he nods his head in understanding and drops his eyes back to the floor.

"Yeah." Mike swallows hard, scuffing his foot sadly. "Yeah, sometimes you do."

"Well I wrapped up my main case and was looking for new opportunities. This seemed too good to pass up. Plus I had a friend who always loved DC. Talked about it all the time. I thought I should see what all the fuss was about." Paige smiles as Mike looks at her like she's a rubex cube he's trying to solve.

"So you DO have friends in town. Is this a _good_ friend?" Daryl finally joins the conversation again, trying to professionally and politely suss out Paige's relationship status.

"Sometimes. We had a tumultuous relationship. You know how it goes, sometimes best friends sometimes enemies." Paige shrugs, "Amazing sex though."

This last comment managed to take both Daryl and Mike off guard as both start choking on their coffee. Nancy just crosses her arms and glares at Paige like she's spilled sour milk all over her.

"Sorry. Went down the wrong pipe." Daryl tries to explain the choking and coffee that he spilled down his front as though it wasn't a reaction to Paige's blunt comment. "So I'm just going to duck into the bathroom and clean up, and then I think that's probably enough tour for the day. I'll hand you over to the IT department and they can get you set up with an email account."

"I can show her where IT is-" Mike starts to offer, but Daryl cuts him off.

"Agent Warren does the FBI have so much funding they can afford you hour long coffee breaks? Stop bothering my agents and go back to your own building." Daryl grumbles. Mike looks like he wants to pull rank and argue, but can find no excuse as to why.

"So Mike, I'll see you at happy hour?" The receptionist, Nancy, can only be ignored for so long, and she seems intent on directing Mike's attention off of Paige and back to her.

"I… ummm…" Mike is still at a loss for words.

"There's a happy hour?" Paige asks.

"Just a few of us from the office get together for drinks every now and then. Nothing official. So Mike I'll see you later?" The receptionist dismisses Paige's search for an invite, and turns back to Mike.

"Um… tonight I… I'm not sure. Let me get back to you?" Mike says, his eyes never leaving Paige.

"Oh there's the IT guy! Well I should get headed back to my desk. Nice meeting you Nancy. Mike, I'm sure I'll see you around." Paige excuses herself brushing back Mike to pour herself a cup of coffee before strolling right past him back to her new desk.


	3. Chapter 3

Paige is not at all surprised when she leaves the office at the end of the day to see Mike waiting outside her building. He's angrily pacing on his phone, but he's found an area where she cannot pass out the main doors without him seeing her first.

"How did something like this slip through the cracks? It was your job to give me a weekly report on the Elvis file. I'm just saying this is something I should have been alerted to! What do you mean am I sure it's her? I was just fucking blindsided by-" Mike is yelling into his phone but sees Paige and his face drains. Paige decides to keep walking. He'd catch up. "Shit. I gotta go. We'll talk about this tomorrow. What do you mean? Yes I'm leaving for the night. I don't always- It's five o'clock. I'm technically off the clock. Shut up."

Mike hangs up his phone and chases after Paige. "Hey! Can I talk to you?"

"Agent Warren right?" Paige plays coy like she doesn't quite remember him. "Sorry, I met so many new people today."

"Cute." Mike says in a tone he finds her coyness anything but. He takes her arm and pulls her away from the rest of the crowd. When he finds an inconspicuous spot away from the flood of federal officers exiting the building he leans in close. Paige feels her heartbeat speed up from his proximity. She missed him. "Is everything ok? Do you need help? What's going on? Are you being followed? Did they find Jakes? Is Briggs released?"

"Calm down." Paige rests her hand on his chest and he looks down at it than back up at her eyes, "Everything's fine. Charlie and Johnny are fine. Jakes is still on the lamb. Briggs is still in jail."

"And you? You're ok, right?" Mike's eyes search hers, and she's touched at how worried he looks. Like he's afraid she may evaporate any second, "You're not sick or in danger or... You're ok?"

"I'm fine." Paige laughs happily, "How are you?"

"Confused. I'm confused. Paige, what are you doing here?"

"I work here." Paige says simply.

"What are you _really_ doing here? Are you going after Jakes? Do you need help?" Mike asks, and Paige cocks her head to the side.

"I could use some help killing a pitcher of Margaritas. You still up for happy hour, or was that just a thing you and Nancy do?" Paige asks.

"That's not- I mean, I'm not-" Mike stumbles over his words, "She's just a colleague."

"Yeah, I know how you are with colleagues." Paige scoffs, holding up her hand to wave down a cab, worried she may have packed up her whole life and moved here only to find him with someone else.

"Paige," Mike takes her arm and stares into her eyes. His stare is so piercing as he tries to read what's happening, that Paige for a moment forgets to breathe. He lets go of her arm and sighs. He's clearly not finding any answers he's looking for, so he just shrugs in defeat. "Yeah, I could use a drink. Where to?"

"I know a place. Not too far. Want to share a cab?" Paige asks.

"Yeah. Ok." Mike holds up his hand to wave down a cab.

Paige can tell from his tense stance he's feeling impatient. He's not accepting the idea that she could simply work here now and he's waiting for some super secret spy mystery to fall into his lap. She can't really blame him after his time at Graceland for being so paranoid. It's true she has some more private motivations that spurred her cross continental move, but he's going to have to wait a little longer, because Paige isn't ready to show her entire hand quite yet.

"You sure? People might talk." Paige warns with a grin, "FBI and DEA fraternizing. Think your career could survive such a scandal? What would Nancy think?"

"Shut up." Mike rolls his eyes and catches a cab, holding the door open for her. Paige hands the cabbie the address that's written down on a piece of paper.

"So is it just you here, or can I expect Johnny to pop up any moment and start busting my balls as well?" Mike asks, putting on his seatbelt in the back seat.

"Just me." Paige settles into the cab opposite Mike, "Charlie says she may come visit in the summer."

"You think you'll be here that long?" Mike asks, staring out the window and Paige has trouble reading his tone.

"We'll see." Paige says cryptically.

"When did you get into town?" Mike asks, trying to sound casual.

"Just a few weeks ago." Paige assures him.

"Why didn't you call me?"

"This is more fun." Paige grins.

"Right." Mike laughs dryly, still staring out the window, his fingers nervously tapping on the armrest of the door.

Paige smiles and looks out her own window, enjoying having the upper hand with Mike for a moment. She's got him in the car. She can be patient otherwise. She enjoys watching him sweat. In the glass of her window she can make out his reflection. When he thinks she's not looking, he turns his head slightly and she watches his eyes travel slowly from the tip up her toes, up her legs, over her body to the top of her head. She presses her lips together to try to hide her pleased smile.

"So where is this place anyways?" Mike asks after a moment of comfortable silence.

"Just around the corner." Paige assures him.

* * *

Two pitchers of margaritas later and Mike is no longer trying to hide his staring and Paige is no longer trying to hide her smile.

They had spent the last two hours talking about their new jobs and reminiscing with old stories of the house. Mike seems to finally be accepting that she's not here on some secret mission, that she actually has a job here and isn't lying to him. He's still waiting for the other shoe to drop, but he's let his guard down slightly.

"I thought you said this bar was around the corner?" Mike asks as he stumbles out of the bar into the fresh night air.

"It is. That's why I like this place. Plus it reminds me of the Drop." Paige assures him. "You remember the Drop?"

"Of course I remember the Drop. But this is not around the corner. We're like an hour out of the city. I could walk home from here." Mike laughs at her definition of 'around the corner'. "I mean I couldn't walk a straight line home from here at the moment, and it would be a hell of a walk but I could do it."

"It is just around the corner. See, we're here." Paige pops up the steps of the brownstone.

"Here? Where are you going?" Mike asks.

"In." Paige says, rooting through her purse for her keys.

"In where?"

"Inside to my apartment." Paige looks coyly over her shoulder at Mike who's still standing on the sidewalk at the foot of the stair. "You coming?"

"You're inviting me up to your apartment?" Mike asks incredulously.

"Yes."

"Sorry I'm just trying to get up to speed here. This morning I was worried about getting my stats report in on time, then suddenly you're here, you take me out for the strongest margaritas I've ever had and now you're inviting me up to your apartment? You have an apartment?"

Paige sighs as she turns and walks two steps down to the bottom step. Reaching out she grabs Mike by his tie and pulls him in to kiss him forcefully. He jerks in surprise at first, but quickly he recovers finding his balance. Somehow it has all the thrill of a first kiss with all the familiarity of home. It's soft and sweet, and once Mike realizes what's happening he leans into it. His hands coming up to hold her hips as he kisses her back with enthusiastic surprise. Once she feels Mike surrender to the kiss, she brings her arms up to rest on his shoulders wrapped around his neck.

"Up to speed yet?" She pulls back from his kiss with a smile, keeping her arms around his neck.

"I'm dreaming aren't I?" Mike asks, staring at her with a dazed expression. "I'm going to wake up any minute and find out this was a dream."

"Mike?" Paige whispers.

"Yeah?"

"Catch up faster." She leans back in for another kiss.


End file.
